Posthumous publication of a book by a great but grievously neglected writer gives posterity a chance to either rectify its mistake or compound it. The recent appearance in the “New Yorker” of a previously unpublished Janet Frame short story, which was deemed to be “too painful” for print in 1954, has generated some scuttlebutt in her homeland.

Besides its crystalline prose, “Gorse is not People” reflects Frame’s determination to view reality from alternative perspectives, in this case that of a dwarf celebrating her 21st birthday. The story also makes disturbing use of Frame’s still fresh memories of life as a resident at Seacliff mental hospital.

But the lack of fanfare greeting the recent publication of “towards another summer,” a short but beautiful novel that Frame thought too personal to be published in her lifetime, suggests that she will be passed over again.

She is best known for her three-volume reminiscence, “An Autobiography,” but Frame’s volumes of fiction, which include twelve novels and five collections of short stories, merits the attention owed to a master, unruly and ruthless, whose imaginative strength lies in the exorbitance of her language. (more…)

Now in its third year under the watchful eye of the admirable Whistler in the Dark Theatre, FeverFest presents a selection of Boston’s fringe groups in an evening of short performances, a sort of theatrical tasting event billed as a round up of “explosive work by vital young companies.” Tonight will be the fest’s final performance; those who support the idea of alternative theater, those who root for more than the usual showbiz bosh should attend. These companies say they want to break boundaries: they must build an audience that will give them the financial and spiritual sustenance they need to perform that invaluable service.

But don’t expect to be challenged, provoked, titillated, or pissed off this time around. The six companies roll out a lineup of resolutely genial pieces that are amiably surreal, sweet-tempered and oh-so–pleasant, bouncy and comfortably entertaining. In other words, nothing in FeverFest 08, in spirit, contradicts the staid-to-the-bone stage seasons of the city’s mainstream establishment theaters. If our fringe troupes aren’t going to take risks, if they aren’t going to embrace this year’s theme for the festival – elemental — than what is the point? (more…)

“The way of the Samurai is a natural way of the Universe, Ma, and to learn it, one must live one’s life from first to last in self-control. I know all about that stuff now.”
– Wynne in Adam Rapp’s “Stone Cold Dead Serious”

Just how far are American playwrights from dramatizing a culture buffeted and manhandled by uncertainty, assaulted by fears of economic catastrophe and successful terrorism attacks? In other words, just how shallow is our theater’s response to changing times? The Gurnet Theatre Project’s energetic Boston premiere (closed) of Adam Rapp’s allegedly dark comedy “Essential Self-Defense” suggests the distance between contemporary reality and theatrical fantasy can be measured in light years.

“Essential Self-Defense”: Love at First Kick in the Head
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“The best of the regular theater critics … the brightest America ever had.”
– Eric Bentley

“The truth is that Mr. Nathan is both a theatrical storehouse, full of the most voluminous and astonishing information, and a whole theatre in himself. He maintains an impetus and lustre that time can not stale.”
– Stark Young

I am over a month late, but attention must be paid. George Jean Nathan, the greatest American theater critic of the 20th century, died fifty years ago on April 8. He was 76. So far no homages have marked the occasion, Nathan’s thirty-four books on the theater are out of print, and Thomas Connolly’s fine “George Jean Nathan and the Making of Modern American Drama Criticism” remains the only substantial volume dedicated to seriously examining his legacy. (more…)

“It’s remarkable because the nominators tend to skew much older,” said Rocco Landesman, president of Jujamcyn Theaters, none of whose tenants were nominated for best musical. “I guess they want to be young and hip. This is more surprising than usual.” – The Year’s Tony List is Filled with Unusual Suspects, New York Times, 5/14/08

Producer Rocco Landesman should head up to Boston. Here the mainstream theater types, particularly our critics, aren’t trying to be “with it.” Here, even though our theaters are surrounded with more students per square mile than in any other city in America, the geriatric reigns. Particularly when it comes to the shows that garner awards.

What do the young turks of YouTube make of award-winning shows like “Man of La Mancha?” It is not impossible to guess.
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I narrate disintegration among rulers
And the kindness of the enemy
I report the speed at which fear grips the innovative
And the intolerable loneliness of the habitually free

– From Howard Barker’s poem “Gary Upright”

A Hard Heart by Howard Barker. Directed by Richard Romagnoli.
Presented by Whistler in the Dark Theatre at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA, through April 26.

Playwright Howard Barker epitomizes his vision of the Faustian urge in the poem “Gary Upright,” whose narrator proclaims himself to be a ‘god unnamed.’ Barker’s art often focuses on the furies of the will-to-power unchained: the consequent construction and destruction ends with the meltdown of an ego blind to its own fallibility. For Barker, the residue of instinct and/or hope that remains after the catastrophe testifies to the elemental vitality, the primal resilience of humanity. (more…)

“Catharsis isn’t a wound being excavated from childhood.” – Sarah Ruhl

NPR as well as New York theater critics think playwright Sarah Ruhl, the “Golden Ruhl” with “The Midas Touch,” is sure money in the artistic bank. A winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 for her comedy “The Clean House,” Ruhl proffers plays that please trend-spotting New Yorkers. And when Big Apple reviewers rave en masse (aside from the sturdy John Heilpern), Boston theaters and critics tend to follow suit.

Squeaky clean scene from the New York production of “The Clean House”

This season The New Repertory Theatre produced “The Clean House”; “Eurydice” will kick off the company’s 25th season. The coronation of Ruhl as The Next New Thing reaches its apex with a recent New Yorker profile by Critic-at-Large John Lahr, a mash note whose intellectual ethereality matches that of its subject. Unsurprisingly, the piece doesn’t make much sense of an artist whose credo — refried from the ‘60s – is to stop making sense. (more…)

“I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.” — Howard Barker

Given the New York Times’s unenthusiastic review of an off-Broadway staging of Howard Barker’s A Hard Heart back in December – “Kathleen Chalfant can perform such miracles onstage that she has even found the lifeblood in Howard Barker’s bloodless essay question of a play” — the chances that the script would receive a Boston production didn’t look good, at least among the city’s cautious medium-sized and larger theaters.

A scene from Howard Barker’s latest play I Saw Myself (more…)

Shining City, by Conor McPherson. Directed by Robert Falls. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company, through April 6 at the Boston University Theatre.

John Judd and Jay Whittaker gas on about a pesky ghost

At their best, ghost stories frolic in the freedom of the imagination: the writer generates his or her delicious shocks by rubbing the supernatural and the psychological together. Unfortunately, Irish playwright Conor McPherson could care less about inducing spooky electricity in the ironically (and mysteriously) titled Shining City. Aside from a rabbit-out-of-a-hat climax designed to jolt dozy audiences awake, the script is ninety minutes of dull chatter, an exploration of guilt too mired in therapeutic cliches to inject any pizazz into its poltergeist or its pair of haunted characters. (more…)

Television offers so little discussion of local stages that I had to check out WGBH’s Greater Boston segment on the state (artistic and financial) of the city’s theater, which aired last week. Of course, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was surprised that – in a predictable effort to assuage the anxieties of suburban audiences as well as local stage companies and businessmen — the genteel boosterism strayed so amazingly far from reality.

The Wilbur Theatre becoming a comedy club? No problem …

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